


Love Will Kill Me, I Swear

by incenseandteacups



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Incubus!Jean, Multi, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-29 14:03:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3899026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incenseandteacups/pseuds/incenseandteacups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren is a human taken to a nightmarish underworld. He would have been sold off as a slave years ago, but Jean, a rather childish prince, decides to take him in. Jean is an incubus, however, and Eren knows that he will be, like every other human servant, eaten and killed by the prince. But after ten years serving the prince, why hasn't he done it yet?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: some dub-con at the end of the chapter. I'm not really a big fan, but it was an idea that wouldn't get out of my head, and after all, I'm trash. It's fairly mild, as dub-con goes. This wasn't quite how I wanted the story to turn out, but I think it did pretty okay? I always end up writing something different than what I mean to. 
> 
> Also, naturally, NSFW.

I've served this creature for far too long. 

The human world seems like a faint memory, years since I've seen it. Now I'm trapped in this hell - and when I say hell, I mean it. Some sort of underworld, where the skies are blanketed in thick clouds that let out an assortment of eerie, nightmarish colors. It's not uncivilized, though - everything goes by a system, with cities and people just like my own home. Although none of them are actually...people. 

Most of them look like it. It's rare you'll see one in their natural form, most hiding their monstrous faces with a human guise. Some sort of formality, I don't know. When I first arrived, I'd been taken from the human world along with what seemed like at least a hundred other children. I was...I couldn't have been more than ten, but I've lost track of time down here, so I don't know how old I am now, or how long it's been. Years. 

It was difficult to realize what I'd gotten into - I'd just huddle in a group with all the others, walk when our keepers said to walk and eat when they gave us food. Some nights, they'd pick a few of us out of the crowd. I never quite saw what happened, but there was yelling, screaming, huge crowds of people surrounding a podium. By now, I know what they were - they were auctions. Selling off slaves. 

I was taken for my auction after around a month, gaunt and paler than was natural for me. My feet were bloody and worn down, the rope around my wrists rubbing them raw. I'd become rather numb to the pain, though. 

And then he decided he wanted me. Passing by in a decorative chariot, the clopping sound of hooves of some horse-like beast on the cobbles of pavement. He couldn't have been much older than me, and the only ways he even seemed different from a human were the slanted tip to his ears and unnatural glow of his golden eyes. He saw me standing on the stage, and without realizing, I met his gaze. 

In the next instant, he was tugging at the sleeve of some woman in the chariot with him. I learned later she was his mother, and someone else, very important. He said something I couldn't hear, eager and pleading, and my body went cold when her eyes landed on me. Being looked at her was like being stared at by a butcher, knowing just how to carve you up. People were still yelling, and when some kind of tentacle wrapped around my ankle, I let out a kind of snarl without realizing - I'd never made a sound like that before. 

It was fear, anger, and I lifted my foot up to smash the appendage down. Some beastly creature screamed, but I didn't stop - the sounds faded to the thud of my own heart and roar of my blood, and I ground my foot down against the edge of the podium I stood on, teeth bared, until the tentacle was cut in two. It was still wrapped around my foot, but when I went to kick it away, something collided with my face so hard everything went white. 

I tried to blink, open my eyes, but something was wrong - my left eye wouldn't work, burning and stabbing with agony until I wanted to scream. Instead, I clutched the eye and shook with hard spasms, feeling blood against my hand. My other eye opened, and I saw our keeper above me, hand raised to strike me again. He was stopped by a dark hand gripping his forearm, tightening until muscles tore and blood dripped onto the ground. He screamed, but I found myself losing consciousness before I could see anything more. From what I heard, I've always assumed he died after that. The next events...

**

I wake up on...is this someone's lap? My body is laying on some soft fabric, silky, but my cheek is pressed against cool skin, and a voice sounds above me. Something is being pressed to my eye, and I register a sharp sting there. 

"Ew, Mom, he's covered in blood and dirt! Do I have to sit with him?" The voice is simultaneously beautiful and obnoxious...young. I don't feel young anymore. 

The next voice is frightening, but soothing in a way I can't explain. I don't want to stop listening to it. 

"Son, you wanted him. Now you have to sit with him. Don't let that compress off his eye, or he'll bleed to death. And he's awake, don't be so rude. This boy has been through more than you realize." Something gets close to my face, and I flinch, my working eye snapping open. 

I'm staring into a face that's still holding just a touch of roundness, like he hasn't grown into his features yet. His eyes are the gold ones I remember seeing from the podium, and as I stare into them, a dark pupil narrows and widens. It's shaped like a vipers', a picture from a textbook flashing in my mind. 

I feel strange. Slowly, with a quiet noise of pain - everything seems to hurt - I shift, rolling onto my back and trying to sit up. The boy is quick to press a hand to my chest, forcing me back down with a roughness I think is unintentional. "You can't sit up yet, human, Mom says you're sick. Gotta rest!" I try to grumble a response, but nothing wants to come out of my dry, thick-feeling throat. The boy continues talking in my stead. "Do you have a name? Everyone here knows my name, but Mom says you probably won't. So I'm Jean." 

"Love, try giving him this." I hear that angelic voice speak again, and my eyes flick across the carriage towards it. A woman sits there - the one he spoke to before, and I recognize those hands - and she hands him a little flask, like the ones you see in fantasy movies. He's clumsy putting the edge to my lips, but I eagerly swallow what tastes like the freshest water I've ever had. 

My voice, when it croaks out, sounds too grown up. I don't like it. "Thank you." The boy grins, and all of his teeth are sharp, like a wolf's. It's still pretty. "I'm...Eren." 

**

The palace isn't a place I ever could have imagined. It's enormous, and unusually bright for the Queen of the Underworld's home - Jean told me who they were on the way over, along with a lot of other information. It should have made me more scared of them, I think, but a demon is a demon. His mother is a succubus, he says, and he is an incubus. That means they can either eat people regularly, or be betrothed to someone and somehow find food that way - that part I don't quite understand until I turn twelve, and overhear one of the serving boys' conversations. By then, my eye's healed up - it doesn't work, though, so I've got a decorative patch that Jean gave me to cover it.

It's a little different to hear that I'm one of those people they plan on eating. Jean, to be specific, although he acts like he's my friend. Well, not exactly 'friend'...I'm his personal servant, he says, even though everyone knows that someday he'll eat me. When we turn fifteen - I count my age by his - it begins to be that every few weeks or so, I'm joined in my duties by another servant. They don't last long. My quarters are joined to his, and at night there'll be moans. Whines of the prince's name. And then, perhaps once a month, the moaning will end with screams and the sound of ripping flesh. A new servant will appear within two weeks. 

The cycle is endless. The Queen treats me like her son, and I wonder if she's faking it. I wonder why Jean hasn't eaten me yet. I wonder why everything feels so normal, why it's not sickening to change his blood-soaked sheets or to watch those sharp teeth glisten when he talks. I wonder why I hate listening to sounds of love more than sounds of death. 

Now, this is my life. I've stopped remembering the human world, although green leaves and the warm sun on my face haunt my dreams. It's bearable. I don't quite feel like a person anymore, but the rare times I do are when I'm with him. I can't decide whether I despise the prince or love him, but for my own sake I decide to hate him. I can't afford to have emotions for someone that sees me as a meal they're saving. 

**

Everything is normal today. I wake up, run the prince a bath and wake him for it, take his soiled sheets and dirty clothes down to the washers. Bring his breakfast back on the way, eat a hurried meal of bread and cheese in the kitchens before I return. Dress the prince and accompany him to his daily businesses - sword practice, tutoring, and of course, whatever he decides to do instead of that. We're twenty. 

The day passes uneventfully, but I feel strangely upset the whole time. Something is shifting uneasily in my gut, and it's waiting for everything to go wrong. Naturally, it's right. 

I've just turned away from him while to pick up his nightclothes, used to seeing his bare torso. His arms wrap around my chest, and an enchanting voice whispers into my ear. 

"Eren. Eren, love, join me tonight. Won't you?" His tone is compelling - incubi are more than capable of controlling a human's will, although he's never used that power on me. I've seen him control a person once before, make them walk to him and to their own death, and just being near it was enough to shake me for the rest of the night. They'd tried to assassinate him. 

It isn't enough to make me obey him, but it is enough to set off the beast that's been coiled within me. Ready for the catastrophe. "No." My tone is sharp already, but instead of listening to me, he starts to nibble on my neck, fangs ghosting over my skin. I shudder once, before turning and slapping him. "I said no, Jean!"

Normally, talking with such disrespect to the prince would get you punished. Harming him would get you killed. 

This isn't 'normally'. 

He stares at me, and I continue. 

"I hear you every damn night, fucking and killing like some beast. I don't even care, don't care if you kill me, too, but I would much rather die than willingly go into your bed. Do you fucking understand me? Or are you still too much of a child to realize what 'no' means?" My words are hissed through gritted teeth, staring at his slack, dumbfounded face. 

I don't get it. I don't get it. "Why don't you kill me, anyway? I've spent ten years here, waiting every night to die, and no one else lasts more than a month before you've eaten them. Why am I the only one?" 

He opens his mouth to speak, straightens his back. His expression is oddly...vulnerable, and the realization hits me like a train. I laugh, and the sound is all scorn and disbelief. "No. Really? This can't be true. Someone like you, in love with me?" I shake my head, turning to walk away. He still doesn't say anything, but I've learned to read him - there's enough horror on his face to prove me right a thousand times. 

Before I enter my room, I spit with all the venom I have left, "As if I could love a monster like you." 

 

**

 

The next day, I head out into the main room...and I'm met with an empty bed. I walk into the hallway, and for some reason, nobody is there. I wander around, trying to find someone, anyone, to tell me what's going on - I finally see a maid hurrying towards me, relieved. 

"Mina! Where is everyone?" She stares at me with rounded eyes. 

"Eren, where were you? You should have been awake hours ago!" I shake my head. I can't help but be concerned - Jean's disappearance is one thing, and he's always one to sulk, but everyone else? Something isn't right. 

"I don't know - I was just in my quarters, and the prince is gone." 

She sighs. "Last night, there were two assassination attempts. The Queen was killed, and the prince has been badly injured. They say he should be healing faster, but it looks as though he's barely been eating." 

My whole body feels cold. This...how did this happen? Why didn't he wake me up when someone came in? I could have helped, I could have...

Why hasn't he been eating? Admittedly, the noises have been scarce lately, but I assumed he was just doing his business somewhere else. He must have been starving last night. 

And the Queen...she's been like my mother, taking care of me and treating me almost exactly as she does Jean, even though I'm just a human. All of this happened in one night. I try to compose myself, feeling tears burning at the corners of my eyes. 

"Where is he?" 

Mina seems shaken, but I don't think she ever felt about them like I did - she's a demon, working here from a stable home, rather than being saved from slavery like I was. "They should be taking him back to his room now - I was sent to come get you about twenty minutes before they said they'd move him." 

I nod, running a hand through my hair before turning and heading with a gait I try to keep paced towards the prince's room. It turns out more like an almost-run. 

When I reach the room, there are guards outside, but no one else. They don't glance at me - I'm the prince's closest servant, after all, and the only odd thing about me going to him now is that I'm not already there. I'm starting to wonder if he didn't put me to sleep so that I couldn't come out and get hurt - it sounds like just the sort of bullshit thing he'd pull. 

The room is dark, one curtain pulled just enough that a faint blue light falls onto his bed. He's a lump wrapped in blankets, nothing but his blond head showing. When I walk in, closing the door, he moans, shuffling a little further into the makeshift nest. 

"Leave me alone." I don't think he realizes it's me, eyes scrunched closed. When I sit next to him on the bed, his nose twitches a few times, and he stiffens. Slowly, golden eyes open, glowing in the almost-darkness. "Eren." 

He stares at me a few seconds more, before his head falls back and his eyes close again. I think at first that he's just exhausted, but then he speaks, and his voice is like a knife cutting into my head. 

"Lay with me." 

My heart starts pounding when my arms move without my permission. I strip off the formal servants' clothes I'm wearing, until I'm left with nothing but a pair of boxers that are a little too revealing for my tastes. My face burns when I realize he's watching me, trying to mutter a curse at him, but my mouth won't work. 

My hand doesn't feel like my hand, settling on the warm sheets when he scoots back and lifts an arm to hold the blankets up. I slide my legs down, and next to his, before laying down on my side, facing away from him. A thin shudder runs through me when he presses his body flush against my own, the tip of his nose on my nape. I feel...exposed. Being controlled like this, unable to move or even speak, is more terrifying than I'd ever imagined. I never realized what he could do. 

He breaths out slowly, warmth on my back, and one of his arms drapes over my stomach, hand sliding under my side to hug me back towards him. His next inhale is more like a sniff, and his lets out a soft noise of contentment. I think it's a combination of the closeness and the effects of being controlled by an incubi, but a warm tingle starts in my stomach, and my boxers start to tent. I'd think he couldn't tell, but he laughs, and I remind myself that he's a sex demon. Of course he can fucking tell. 

"You've always smelled so nice. Like...roses, and vanilla. I smelled it that day when I first met you." His voice makes me twitch, and if I could move more than that, I think I'd be rutting my hips forward. Fuck. I didn't think that being under an incubus' control would make me feel...well, so damn horny. 

"I'd let you go, but you'd leave, and they said...well, they said I need to eat." Horror and realization dawn in my chest. Not this. Anything but this. "I won't kill you, though. You...well, you know why." He's quiet, and if I could, I'd be shaking my head. No, no, kill me, please kill me - because I can't be in love with a demon, a king of them at that, and I'm scared I'll reveal that if we do this. Sex doesn't mean the same thing to demons that it does to humans, especially incubi - he knows I don't want to, but he doesn't understand why. "I'm sorry." His voice is a whisper. "It won't be much."

The hand that was on my stomach slides down, too far down, and when it comes into contact with my cock, a choked sound like a whimper sounds in my throat. His fangs are on my neck again, murmuring soft apologies into my ear when he slips his hand under my boxers and starts to stroke me with a grip that's both too light and too much. All I can do is lay there, flinching every so often and screaming at my arms to move. 

Pressure grows in the pit of my stomach, and suddenly he releases me. He mumbles something I can't hear, and that control starts up again - I sit up, sliding my boxers down over my hips and kicking them onto the floor. Getting onto my knees on the bed, my face burns with humiliation as I basically straddle his face. His smile is apologetic. "Sorry. I can't move enough to do it the other way." 

My hands move on their own to grip the headboard, and it's a terrible pleasure I can't find enough ways to describe - my cock sinks into his mouth, warm and slick. It only takes a few sucks, his tongue rubbing on the underside, before I'm coming harder than I have in my life. I can't speak, so instead of moaning, I shudder violently, body wracked with pulses of ecstasy so strong it feels like it should kill me. He swallows it all, an unusual look of bliss on his face - it takes me a moment to realize he's coming as well, an odd motion beneath me letting me know he's stroking himself off. He moans around me, and I jolt one last time before panting the last bit of pleasure away. 

Now I'm moving away, settling back down to lay where I was. I feel a bit like crying, but mostly, I'm exhausted - I shouldn't need to rest again, but I hear him mutter another command behind me, pressing his face into my back and kissing the nape of my neck. "Sleep." 

How did this happen?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a finishing-up chapter! This AU didn't really turn out how I wanted it to, so this is more for closure than anything else - I'm gonna write a different version with slightly different circumstances. S'a little short, but it wraps things up, I think - turned out better than I'd thought it would be when I started. (Writing angst is fun but so risky - how much drama is too much? What's good and what's cheesy? Who knows!)

When I wake up, the throbbing in my side diminished, he's crying. 

My eyes widen, unable to do anything but stare at first. The command I gave him to rest must have worn off awhile ago, because now he's sitting up, eyes red and swollen as he sobs. It isn't like it's the first time I've seen him cry; when we were younger, the trauma he'd experienced more recent, he would have night terrors like I've never seen. I'd just crawl into his bed and let him wrap his arms around me - it was...warm. Humans are a different kind of nice to be around, and him especially. 

This feels different. Wrong, wrong in the sense that I'm the reason for it. I've never understood why he's so against having sex with me - I'm an incubus, so he likely doesn't realize, but my body is tailored to be exactly what he wants. It's like that with all humans; seduction is our form of hunting, and we're made for it.

I need sex to survive, so the act is very...normal, to me, but it's clear he sees differently. I've never seen him upset like this. If I'd realized being with me would do this to him, I...I don't know what I would have done. I stopped eating about two months ago, the mere taste of someone who wasn't him making me feel nauseous. And then I was wounded - which wouldn't have happened if I'd been fed. My mother died, and while incubi don't feel quite the same as humans about death, it...shook me. 

And I did something I shouldn't have. But really - why is he so upset? I don't get it, and I'm worried that I won't ever be able to. 

I jump when he speaks, voice thick and trembling. "I know you're awake. You move in your sleep, and you...you get all still, when you've woken up." Slowly, I sit up, wincing as the motion pulls at the deep wounds in my midsection - they're better after eating, but it'll probably be awhile before I can move like I used to. 

"Are..." Do I even have the right to ask if he's okay? I'm responsible. "Are you alright?" 

He responds about as well as I expected, laughing. 

"Alright? No, Jean, I'm not alright. I haven't been fucking alright since I came to this hellhole." His voice sharpens, and I see him tighten a shaking hand on his leg. "You...you took everything from me. My mother? I can't remember her face. Or her voice. I can barely remember the sun. Or grass, fuck, I miss green things. Everything here is dead." 

I wish I could find words to say, but I've always been stupid in situations like this. My chest hurts. "Eren..."

"Shut up. You know, there have been so many times I've wished I was dead? Thought about what would have happened if you hadn't seen me or asked to buy me. That auctioneer probably would have killed me. Maybe that would have been better. I'd never have met you." 

I make a choking noise, not realizing for a few seconds that it was me. He turns, stares at me, and his smile is broad, white teeth showing up against swollen lips and blotchy cheeks. "Does that upset you? You don't get to be upset. You don't get to be hurt, even. You fucking - you don't eat, for months, and then nearly get yourself killed!" He's starting to cry again, smile melting as his lips quiver with restraint. "So I come to see if you're alright. And...and you take this, from me, too? The only thing I've managed to hold onto is my body. Controlling myself. I might have been beat for it, I might have lost a fucking eye for it, but I always chose for myself. And you...you fucking took that away."

I don't realize what's about to happen until his fist makes contact with my stomach, the sharp blow directly above the bandages wrapped around me. The pain is blinding, and I bend over, arms wrapped around myself as I wheeze. "What do I have now, Jean? What the fuck do I have now?" He screams, and I just manage to hear the guards come in. It takes some effort to turn enough to shake my head at them, and for some reason, this only seems to enrage Eren further. He stands up, and I watch through blurry vision as he ducks his head, shudders, runs his hands through his hair and clenches fists in them tightly enough that I know he's scratching into his scalp. 

He turns, looks at me, and tears are pouring from those eyes I find so beautiful, even now. "Why do you love me? I don't...I don't understand. I'm nothing. I'm just some kid who shouldn't even be alive." He tightens taut hands into his hair, and as my own pain fades I see how it must be hurting him. Ever-so-slowly, his grip loosens, head still down, and his arms lower to let his hands hang loosely at his side. "Why do I love you? Why do I love someone who's taken everything I have?" 

Oh. I think...I think I'm starting to get it. 

I slide my legs off so that my feet touch the carpeted floor, biting my lip to suppress a groan when I stand. Walking hurts, but I'm a demon. I can handle it. He doesn't look at me when I reach for him, still limp and lost, and I'm reminded of the emptiness in his eyes after his nightmares. He'd stop crying, just...still, motionless, like he was dead. 

I pull him into a familiar kind of embrace, his face pressing into my chest, and after a long moment, his arms wrap hesitantly around me. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I whisper, and he starts to sob again, shuddering against me and letting out little gasps despite his attempts to stay quiet. I can't fix this, and I can't make up for how I hurt him, but at least I know he doesn't truly hate me. That was a pain I'm not sure I could have lived with. 

My touch is soft, nervous that he'll be angry again, but I slip a hand under his jaw, and he allows me to tilt his head upwards. I stare into eyes that are too bright for a human's, and he looks as though he's trying to read mine. I inch a little closer, and he moves just a bit back at first, skittish and vulnerable. His brows furrow, biting at his lip. Gradually, he leans into me, and the kiss is different and so much better than I'd imagined it would be. It's soft, warm, and his lips taste like salty tears. 

He pulls back, then, and lets his face rest against my chest once more, looking off to the side. "I hate you." I laugh, softly, feeling a light in my chest that demons aren't supposed to feel. 

"I love you, too."


End file.
